A pig-like creature is walking around in the territory of the indigenous Guaraní on the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil. “My name is Rete, I am a peccary,” it tells us. And it shares what started happening to nature back in the days when the colonizers began to settle. “One day, those who are many started arriving.” Over time, the stones they brought started swallowing up more and more space, restricting an ancient river, plants and many creatures.

Also in the indigenous territory, a woman named Jera Rete dreams. In her nightmares, the city invades her village. But there is also an old woman who keeps talking to her. And even the river has a voice – if you are only willing to listen.

In her poetic debut feature, Arrow for a Stone Heart (Flecha para Um Coração de Pedra), writer, director and cinematographer Luiza Calagian, in collaboration with the local Guaraní indigenous community, transport us into the heart of the forest near the city. And the documentary-fiction hybrid’s narrative is very different for a reason. The way the indigenous people experience and narrate reality is different. From their perspective, myths, dreams, and relationships with non-humans connect different temporalities and perspectives.

The cinematic, maybe even hallucinatory, journey that the movie takes us on elucidates the history of the community’s struggle. Cinema emerges as an opportunity for understanding and, possibly, change.

Arrow for a Stone Heart celebrates its world premiere on Tuesday, Nov. 17, in the Rebels with a Cause Competition of the 30th edition of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) in Estonia.

Calagian co-wrote the film with Jera Rete. Calagian also handled cinematography and shared the editing duties with Caio De. The producers are Vinicius Toro and Sabrina Zimmermann, with Bruno Cucio serving as executive producer. Utopia Docs is handling distribution and world sales.

Ahead of the world premiere, Calagian told THR about how the idea for Arrow for a Stone Heart came about and its unique voice, look and feel.

“I kind of grew up with this film. It’s been seven years now,” the creative explains. “The film began to transform as well, and at a certain point, I understood that it wouldn’t make sense for me to try to tell the story, which is the story of the Guaraní. It had to be told from their point of view and from their perspective rather than one that comes from the West.”

So, how do you do that in a comprehensive way? “The mission became how do we bring the Guaraní cosmology, the Guaraní philosophy, the way that they see, organize, narrate and symbolize reality into the structure of a film, which is by its nature a Western thing,” Calagian tells THR. “But this also opened up the possibilities of transformation that this art has.”

The first thing she started looking at was dreams. “The Guaraní are very, very, very connected to their dreams,” she explains. “They don’t understand dreams just as something that your mind creates or something that your imagination creates, but the dream for them is a form of connecting to other dimensions, other beings, other spirits, to people who are not here anymore, and to gods.”

In the process, Jera became a close friend. “She embraced the project to the point that she became a co-writer,” Calagian shares with THR. “She also started organizing who was going to be in the film. The main characters other than her are her two daughters. One of the girls, her youngest, plays the river, and the older daughter, who also appears briefly at the end of the film, voiced Rete, the peccary. So everything kind of revolves around Jera. She is the leader of this village, and she became not only the co-writer but also the whole heart of the film.”

The filmmaker also fell in love with Rete, the peccary. And the peccary became the symbol of her production company, Mata Fechada Filmes. “For me, it is a symbol,” Calagian says. “It has a lot to do with the magic of cinema. The Guaraní say it has the capacity of moving and traveling between worlds and entering different dimensions, different perspectives and visiting the gods.”

Humans destroying the natural balance and colonization are recurring themes of Arrow for a Stone Heart. The river, for example, is considered one of the wisest and most powerful spirits for the Guaraní. “Even before colonization, when everything was more in harmony, the Guaraní were very careful and very respectful of those river spirits because they can be dangerous – they are not to be messed with,” the filmmaker highlights. “That’s why I wanted to include this character, the river, to tell her side of the story. Despite all of this destruction, there is still life in the river, which is amazing. Somehow, nature finds a way to survive, even in such adverse conditions. She represents an anthropomorphic presence.”

Even words and language were chosen with care to properly represent the indigenous people’s view of the world. “Those who are many” is one of the recurring phrases, for example. “That is the common way they call the people who invaded,” Calagian tells THR.

She has actually worked with the Guaraní for more than 10 years now, having in the past also focused on communications efforts to make their voice heard. “We were working on a campaign to make the government recognize the indigenous lands that they had inside the city, one of the biggest metropolises in the world,” the filmmaker notes. “There is a big historical dispute around the history of colonization, especially in São Paulo. There is a regional culture that celebrates the colonizers who were responsible for invading this territory, which has always been Guaraní territory.”

That’s also where the film title, Arrow for a Stone Heart, comes from. It is not only a play on the phrase “heart of stone” for cruel or cold-hearted people but also a reference to the statues and other reminders and colonialism. “There are still a lot of historical monuments, a lot of street names, a lot of public political symbols that celebrate the colonizers, the people who killed and enslaved the indigenous people,” highlights Calagian. “We understood how important this dispute between narratives was, and that’s how this project was born.”

Watch the trailer for Arrow for a Stone Heart here.